Could This Transforming Touchscreen Make a Tablet for the Blind?

Touchscreens revolutionized mobile computing, but if you want to use a touchscreen phone or tablet, you need more than just fingers; you need to be able see as well. Until now, the blind have been unfortunately left behind in our race into a touchscreen future, but a new tablet called "Blitab" might be able to help.

It's not that it's impossible for the blind to use iPads or smartphones. There are devices built precisely for that purpose. If you've never seen one before, they're actually quite fascinating. A collection of uniquely-shaped buttons and Braille pistons that fire up and down can actually let someone without eyesight find their way around a tablet.

GIF

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

The Blindtab employs the same basic idea, but with different tech: a transforming touchscreen that can actually summon up bumps on the spot. As Co.Design points out, the plan is a little off in the distance; the Blintab still hasn't been patented yet, so its makers are being pretty vague about how it works and aren't showing off any working prototypes. But! You can get a pretty good idea of how this would work by checking out some tech that's already out in the wild.

Most Popular

A touchscreen that has tactile key-bumps that can appear out of nowhere has been a dream feature ever since phones started abandoning actual physical keyboards. And in the intervening years, it's actually become a reality. The first commercial outing of such a screen comes in the form of an iPad case made by a company called Tactus.

GIF

Gizmodo

It's an awesome effect, if pretty rudimentary in its execution. The screen you see popping up in the GIF above isn't built into an actual touchscreen. Instead it's just an extra layer that covers the screen. And the bumps that raise up to give the tablet little tactile nubs are filled by purely mechanical means; you have to flip a switch that physically pumps liquid into tiny sacs on the screen.

Still, you can see how an extension of this same tech could easily make something like the Blitab possible. All you need to do is cover the whole screen with those tiny nubs, replace the mechanical pump with something automatic, and develop software that translates the web into Braille for display on them. It's not a small feat, but it seems pretty doable.

Blitab hopes to launch its blind-friendly tablet sometime in 2016, with a round of funding from investors to help get over the hump of initial costs and ultimately reduce the price of specialized transforming screens like this. If they're successful, these tablets will obviously be a great tool for the visually impaired—and maybe those of us who miss tactile BlackBerry keyboards will benefit from the tech too.